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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27779071">Nachala</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ampithoe/pseuds/Ampithoe'>Ampithoe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Grief/Mourning, Judaism, M/M, Natasha Pitch - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:21:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>739</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27779071</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ampithoe/pseuds/Ampithoe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Baz carries Natasha's memory through the years.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Carry On Countdown 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nachala</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Nachala is a Hebrew word which literally means "legacy" and is used to refer to the anniversary of a person's death. (By the way, the "ch" is soft, like in loch or chutzpah.)</p>
<p>I'm headcanoning that the Egyptian branch of the Pitches are Egyptian Jews. Some readers may be more familiar with the term "yahrzeit" for a death anniversary, but that's the Yiddish term, used mainly by Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I can never sleep on my mother's nachala, the anniversary of her death. My father isn't Jewish but my mother was, which means that I am. My Aunt Fiona made sure that I learned Hebrew and taught me the mourning customs. For the week after Mother's death, Fiona sits shiva </span>
  <span>— </span>
  <span>sitting on a low box in a darkened room. I spend some of that time with her, though I don't sit much. I run and yell, throw myself against the walls, sob with my head in her lap. Looking back on it later, I don't know whether having me there made it harder for her, or if having her sister's son to hold and care for was a tiny gift in the heart of despair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next year, the first nachala, Fiona brings a candle and has me light it. I kindle the flame on my finger, just like my mother taught me. Father hates to see me work with fire -- he's afraid I'll go up like an oily rag and the only thing he has left of Mother will be gone. Fiona wants me to be careful, but she's a Pitch and so am I. Fire is our inheritance. She recites the Mourner's Kaddish. I don't know it yet, but the words and cadences are familiar from the funeral and from shiva. Fiona and I sit up all night. We watch the flame and she tells me stories about Mother. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Traditionally, you need a group of 10 Jews to say Kaddish, but we've never been communal in our Judaism, so it's just me and Aunt Fiona.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By the second nachala, I've learned to read Hebrew letters well enough to sound out the Kaddish along with Fiona. She goes slowly so that I can keep up. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Hebrew calendar is different from the secular one, so the date of Mother’s nachala changes from year to year. Her sixth nachala falls on the third day of my first term at Watford. Fiona comes to Watford and we sneak down to the Catacombs with a candle to say Kaddish.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>By her seventh nachala, I have studied enough magical theory to realize that the Kaddish has the potential to be a powerful spell. These words have been said by millions of people over hundreds of years. The traditional belief is that it eases the experience of the departed as well as strengthening their memory. I'd probably think that was nonsense if I was a Normal, but I know that spirits persist behind the Veil. I don't know what the spell would actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span>, though, so I don't speak the words with magic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On the eighth nachala, I am thirteen years old </span>
  <span>—</span>
  <span> a bar mitzvah, a son of the commandment. We're not synagogue people, so I haven't chanted Torah or given a speech or had a party. But after the Kaddish (which I now know by heart) I say the traditional words to my mother: "Today I am a man."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I wish I thought I was a man she could be proud of. But I've had to start drinking blood this year, like the vampires that killed her, and I'm sure that she would despise what I've become.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On her fourteenth nachala I have Simon with me for the first time. He holds me as I chant the Kaddish and listens as I tell him my few precious memories of her. He's had so much loss himself in the last year, but tonight he is here for me and I love him without reservation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On her eighteenth nachala, I truly am a man </span>
  <span>—</span>
  <span> graduated from university and engaged to be married. Eighteen is the numerological value of the Hebrew word "chai," meaning life. Her death does feel like it was in another life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>On her twenty-first nachala, I hold our infant daughter in my arms as I lean into Simon’s shoulder. I say the Kaddish and weep.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her thirty-sixth nachala is double-chai. Two lifetimes gone. I light the candle and then Simon and I hold hands with our two daughters, now teenagers, as the girls say the Kaddish with me. They aren't Jewish, since their birth mother wasn't and they haven't converted, but I've taught them the mourning customs, just as I've taught them fireworking and told them stories of their grandmother.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Fire. Memories. A love of learning. A love of Judaism. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All of these things are part of her legacy. Her nachala.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Many thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherWorldsIveLivedIn">OtherWorldsIveLivedIn</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Visinata">Visinata</a> for beta reading this!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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